Monday 26 September 2005
Snow Kiting
Although we have an abundance of snow round here, one thing which we lack is mountains or even small hills. Not to be deterred, snowboarding types have been bringing their boards down here for years to try out skijuring. Skijuring is basically a cross between water-skiing and snowboarding, using a skidoo instead of a powerboat. You get on your snowboard, hold on to a rope that's tied to the skidoo and get pulled around at high speed!
Skijuring is great fun but has the disadvantage that you need someone else to drive the skidoo around while you enjoy yourself. It's also quite tiring on your arms and when it gets really cold the skidoos start to get a lot less co-orperative until eventually you just can't get them started at all. To solve all these problems, people started using power-kites instead of skidoos.
At Halley the wind is commonly blowing at around 10 knots as smooth turbulence free air flows off the Antarctic Plateau. Modern powerkites can easily pull a person in those conditions, and are manuverable enough to let you go where ever you want (even up wind by tacking like you would in a sailboat). You attach yourself to the kite using a special harness so you don't need to hold on, making it a lot less tiring. You can even use the power of the kite to lift you right off the ground for jumps! Kiting has become increasing popular over the last few years - this year eight of the sixteen winterers have a kite of some kind.
A typical kite setup
It looks complicated but actually it's pretty straightforward. Once you're hooked in you use the bar to control the kite. Twisting it to the left or right turns the kite and pulling or pushing the bar towards or away from you to adjusts the amount of power. The blue and yellow toggles can be pulled to adjust the angle of attack of the kite to suit different wind conditions. The red ball is the safety release. If you pull that it depowers the kite and it falls out of the sky - handy if you've lost control and are being dragged along the floor!
Yesterday was a beautiful sunny day with the wind blowing 12-15 knots - perfect conditions for kiting. Craig and I were out there for about 4 hours as the sun was setting, briefly returning to the Laws platform for a barbecue half way through. It was cold (-35C with a wind chill temperature below -50C) but it's surprisingly hard work riding over the lumpy surface so you don't actually get too cold as long as you're moving. Here are some pictures from yesterday (taken by Frances):
Getting ready to launch the kite, with the Simpson platform in the background.
Me kiting with the Laws platform and radio masts in the background.
Heading off across the ice shelf. As you can see we've got no shortage of empty space to practice in.
Craig (left) and me (right) still out there as the sun was setting. You can see the long shadows of Craig and Frances (who was taking the photo) stretching almost to the horizon.
Packing up once it got too dark to carry on. At the moment that is about 9pm but it won't be long before we have 24 hour sunlight so you'll be able to kite all night if you want!
I'm leaving on my post-winter trip tomorrow so you won't hear any more from me until at least the 6th October, when I will return, hopefully with some great pictures and tales of adventure!
Posted by simon at 9:41 PM | Feedback (10)